14 ms·

Why was there a wall near runway at S Korea plane crash airport?

135 points by vinni2 2y ago

hilux 2y ago
So many things went wrong, and yet the pilots brought the plane down safely – and then this!? Just infuriating.
- underseacables 2y ago
  They did not bring the plane down safely! The pilot failed to lower the landing gear, or extend the flaps, both of which, for all intensive purposes were technologically possible. Multiple redundant systems for these. I think they completely lost situational awareness, and panicked.
  - K0balt 2y ago
    When an engine blows up, it’s hard to say what still worked and what didn’t. They aren’t supposed to, but when turbines come apart, there is often a lot of shrapnel that has a history of taking out multiple systems. But, it is possible that it was a case of poor crew performance. In any case, the concrete blockhouse at the end of the runway was unhelpful, and it is also outside of the standard guidance for runway aligned obstructions. In most cases, those antennas would have been on frangible towers, and the crew, at fault or not, as well as the passengers, would have had a decent chance of walking away unharmed.
    - f1shy 2y ago
      There are 3 different hydraulic system plus one electric that can be operated out of a battery… anything is possible, but it seems until now they failed to lower the gear.
      - underseacables 2y ago
        Something else that may be a factor, a lot of Asian carriers teach their pilots to use auto pilot for landing. American pilots almost universally SOP do not use auto pilot when landing. It's possible the South Korean pilot was using auto pilot to land, forced to do a go around, but wasn't in the habit of manually configuring the plane for landing. That's how the flaps and the gear were both missed. He assumed autopilot etc was handling that. I think in the cockpit voice recording we are going to be hearing the sirens going off about no landing gear and those guys were just not paying attention.
        K0balt 2y ago
        That would be a tragic void in training and procedure. I hope for the sake of the families involved that it doesn’t turn out to be something so avoidable in practice and foreseeable in the carriers operating procedure.
        f1shy 2y ago
        I’m afraid it will be something like that…
        wat10000 2y ago
        There are numerous past examples of this sort of thing. Automation in aviation is really hard to get right. If the automation can fail then the pilots need to be able to perform whatever it was going to do. If the automation fails rarely then the pilots may not get enough practice. But if the automation normally does a better job than the pilots, there’s a tension with letting them get more practice on real flights. A recent(ish) example is the Asiana crash in SF. They had pretty much perfect conditions for a hand-flown visual approach, but they were out of practice, got behind the airplane, and it snowballed. There’s an excellent lecture about this called Children of the Magenta Line. The magenta line being the flight path or direction indicator on an autopilot, and the discussion is about pilots who constantly reconfigure the autopilot to direct the plane instead of just taking over. https://youtu.be/5ESJH1NLMLs https://youtu.be/5ESJH1NLMLs
        robinson-wall 2y ago
      - loeg 2y ago
        There's also a backup manual gear release. But from the degree of control over the airplane demonstrated during landing, it seems likely they had hydraulics.
  - f1shy 2y ago
    They were with gear down, the retracted it, as part of the go around…
    - iso8859-1 2y ago
      We don't know that for sure yet. The gear being down is based on an eyewitness report, as far as I understand from Juan Browne. The readout from the flight data recorder will provide a more trustworthy account.
      - bombcar 2y ago
        If I recall right the video that purportedly shows the bird strike shows the gear down.
        loeg 2y ago
        The bird strike (well, compressor stall) video I saw appears to show gear up. https://x.com/Global_Mil_Info/status/1873181671375421703 https://x.com/Global_Mil_Info/status/1873181671375421703
  - kiririn 2y ago
    >for all intensive purposes Always a funny one, it's for all intents and purposes
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- f1shy 2y ago
  Absolutely no. There is the suspicion that they even shut down the good engine after the bird strike.
  - mmooss 2y ago
    > Absolutely > suspicion "suspicion" seems like fragile grounds for "Absolutely".
    - loeg 2y ago
      It objectively wasn't a safe landing. How that happened is anyone's guess, until the investigation comes out.
    - f1shy 2y ago
      Those are 2 sentences. Lately I’ve seen lots of people doing such snarky comments, without reading carefully, or just writing things that are absolutely illogical… what is going on?!
      - mmooss 2y ago
        > Those are 2 sentences. Are you saying the two sentences, in sequence, are unrelated? > snarky I wasn't intending to be snarky. My point was serious: 'suspicion' is not grounds for 'absolutely'.
- wat10000 2y ago
  Bringing a plane down safely involves doing it in a way that lets you come to a stop before you crash into something that’s going to kill everyone. You don’t get points for touching a runway at a point where there isn’t enough of it left for you. No commentary on the pilots’ role here, we don’t know nearly enough to judge. Could be they did a great job and they were just doomed. But the end result is that they didn’t get it down safely.
mcflubbins 2y ago
I was wondering the same thing and suspected it was some safety feature (better for a plane to smack into said wall instead of crash into some populated area, etc) I had no idea he had to make the approach in the opposite direction.
- Towaway69 2y ago
  This: > no idea he had to make the approach in the opposite direction. So the wall is actually at the beginning of the runway. That wall was never never meant to be at the end of a landing but at the start of landing. I don't understand why this isn't made clear. Basically the runway was used against the design specifications.
  - notimetorelax 2y ago
    Runways are approached from both ends depending on the wind.
    - dredmorbius 2y ago
      This depends strongly on the airport, terrain, and variability of winds. There are airports in which approaches always or very nearly always follow the same profiles given local conditions. SFO, SJC, and SAN would be three examples off the top of my head. SFO's major approaches are over the bay, opposite approaches would involve rapid descents dictated by mountains near the airport. SJO and SAN are both limited by proximate downtowns with tall towers. Nominal approach glide paths cut below the rooflines of several structures, and make for some interesting experiences for arriving travellers.
      - notimetorelax 2y ago
        You’re right. Looking at the charts, it appears that both 01 and 19 can be used - https://aim.koca.go.kr/eaipPub/Package/2020-07-30/html/eAIP/KR-AD-2.RKJB-en-GB.html https://aim.koca.go.kr/eaipPub/Package/2020-07-30/html/eAIP/... What’s noteworthy, there’s a note to use extreme caution due to this wall if landing or taking off towards it.
Mistletoe 2y ago
I don’t know why people keep fixating on this. Airplanes can’t skid out of the airport into the surrounding city. Mistakes were made, but this isn’t one of them. I suspect it is people trying to deflect blame from pilot error, which seems by far the most likely issue. They did none of the things you should do to stop a plane.
- csomar 2y ago
  There is nothing beyond the embankment. Airports are generally made in the middle of nowhere. And no, they are not "skidding" into the surrounding city, he probably needed a few hundred meters at most.
  - Mistletoe 2y ago
    He’s going extremely fast, a few hundred meters would do nothing. I think the estimates I saw were over 150 knots. That’s about 77 meters per second. I found this comment helpful from a Reddit thread. >The embankment is there to protect the road from the jetblast of departing aircraft in oposite runway direction. Thats why it is allowed directly in the safety area.
    - foxglacier 2y ago
      > a few hundred meters would do nothing. I think the estimates I saw were over 150 knots Show you working. Not feelings because people don't have intuition for such unusual motion. You could equally have said "a few hundred meters would be enough."
      - snypher 2y ago
        150 knots is like 77 meters a second, a 747 can do like 2m/s^2 braking giving 35 seconds to stop, 1500 meters required. Stopping time: t=v/a, t=77/2. Stopping distance: d=v^2/2a, d=77^2/2*2
        loeg 2y ago
gazchop 2y ago
I think this is disingenuous reporting. It’s too early to actually draw a conclusion. We should wait for the full investigation. There are a large number of compounding problems here. That was just the last one.
- copperx 2y ago
  Even with all of the compounded problems, the flight could have been non fatal in most world airports.
  - gazchop 2y ago
    I wouldn’t state that with any certainty. They touched down 1500m down the runway with little to no braking or reverse thrust. The ending may have been less violent but the outcome may have been the same. I’d rather go from blunt force than being burned alive if a wing ditched and it rolled. Let’s wait for the investigators. It’s not good to fixate on this outcome.
    - ckw 2y ago
      This is the landing of United Airlines Flight 232 in Sioux City, Iowa in 1989. It hit the runway very hard, tumbled, broke, left the runway, and burned, but encountered no significant non-frangible obstacle. Of 296 passengers and crew on board, 184 (62%) survived. It is reasonable to assume that given the absence of other significant non-frangible obstacles beyond the ILS mound that loss of life would have been low and potentially zero. https://youtu.be/sWkU6HRcOY0 https://youtu.be/sWkU6HRcOY0
- thekevan 2y ago
  "... the significance of the concrete wall's location about 250m (820ft) off the end of the runway." "...the runway design "absolutely (did) not" meet industry best practices, which preclude any hard structure within at least 300m (984ft) of the end of the runway." "it emerged that remarks in Muan International Airport's operating manual, uploaded early in 2024, said the concrete embankment was too close to the end of the runway." I mean that was a pretty obvious design flaw that went against common standards. I agree it isn't cut and dry yet but an investigation isn't going to change the above info.
ge96 2y ago
I was wondering what if they tried to turn whether by rudder or thrust differential would the outcome have been different/worse. Maybe you can't do much at that speed and so little room.
- lutusp 2y ago
  I'm a pilot. The airplane was sliding on the ground and the landing gear was not deployed. Too fast to stop but not fast enough to use the rudder for directional control. There was no realistic chance to change direction. If there had been enough engine power to control direction on the ground, there might also have been enough power to remain airborne, but based on limited information, that wasn't so. Under the circumstances the pilots would have wanted to stay airborne to buy time for a more controlled descent, were that possible. All these speculations are preliminary and may completely change once the black box information is released.
  - rogerrogerr 2y ago
    > not fast enough to use the rudder for directional control. Sure about that? 160kt (how fast someone calculated it went off the end of the runway) is way above Vs1 for a 737, there should be plenty of rudder authority. Heck, Vapp is usually in the 130-150kt range.
    - bombcar 2y ago
      Rudder authority in the air, but scraping on the ground you’re not going to change direction - or take-off, either. If they were trying to take off again, there wasn’t any hope.
tedunangst 2y ago
How much difference would an additional 50m have made?
- baq 2y ago
  To be brutally honest, the plane would crash about a second later, so approximately none whatsoever. But this isn’t the right question to ask, as it isn’t the right question to ask why the wall was there. Why did the pilot and ATC decide it’s a good idea to attempt a gear up landing in the wrong direction is a good start.
  - EliRivers 2y ago
    I recall back in 2020, when Pakistan International flight 8303 belly landed at Karachi, slid down the runway, and then took off again and had a go at going around, the investigation showed that between them, the pilots just screwed up on having the landing gear down and had a go at landing without it for no other reason than they fumbled it.
    - loeg 2y ago
      The PIA pilots totally fucked up the approach, missed that they were very high late in the approach, dive bombed down to the runway at the last minute instead of going around. CRM issues -- the senior pilot plausibly couldn't actually fly (he had a history of bad approaches with unsafe descents) and the first officer failed to raise major problems or push back at all on unsafe decisions. When they first touched down gear up, they had dual stick inputs (one pilot was pushing down, one was pulling up) -- this is a huge no no. Communication in the cockpit was awful. Just lots of awful. After the incident, PIA pilots were audited and determined like 1/3 had fake or suspicious pilot licenses(!!!). Lots of paying other people to pass tests for you. Internationally, PIA has been banned from landing by like all first world countries.
- __m 2y ago
  Compared to running into a concrete wall probably a lot
- 2y ago
baq 2y ago
The title question is like the 20th in order of importance why this crash happened…
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- blitzar 2y ago
  Cause of death was impacting a concrete barrier.
  - ynniv 2y ago
    Cause of death was landing halfway down a runway at high speed with no gear. Why were they cleared to land if they hadn't set flaps and locked gear? There was ocean in front of them both before and after their turn: landing there would have been more survivable than landing fast and hard with no gear. They were below minimum turnback altitude, and wouldn't have been able to complete the planned turn without the same power that could have been used to stay aloft and sort out their problems. Nothing about this crash was normal, and talking about a thing past the end of the runway is misdirection.
    - bink 2y ago
      They declared an emergency. It's typical in that scenario to be approved for whatever runway the pilot deems best... or golf course... or field.
      - ynniv 2y ago
        According to the timeline I saw they were cleared before declaring an emergency. This means at the time of emergency the standard checklist required their gear had been locked and flaps set. Either they were not operating within regulation before they declared emergency, or they raised gear and retracted flaps below 900 AGL and decided to make an impossible turn instead of stabilizing their flight. I don't know what happened in this event, but the concrete box is painfully uninteresting compared to basically anything that happened before it.
Jabrov 2y ago
Runway’s gotta end somewhere
- vasco 2y ago
  Technically it could loop around the earth.
  - echoangle 2y ago
    You don’t even have to make it that long, you can just make a large circle of runway: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endless_runway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endless_runway
gsf_emergency 2y ago
Korean police have raided the airport offices https://youtu.be/3D9BDIH553U https://youtu.be/3D9BDIH553U
psychoslave 2y ago
Just a message thinking for anyone reading who might have had some relative in this plane: sincere condolences.
Yeul 2y ago
I have been to airports whose runway end in the ocean, a swamp, a mountain and a 5 lane highway.
- Aeolun 2y ago
  I’m worried about the ocean all the time, so it’s weird to think that’s actually the best kind of scenario.
  - WeylandYutani 2y ago
    Well depends on the weather conditions. All the successful plane ditches happened when there weren't any waves.
    - crote 2y ago
      It wouldn't be a ditch anymore. The plane won't be going perfectly straight and level while hitting the water, so there's a pretty good chance one wing/engine would hit the surface first and cause a cartwheel.
dominicrose 2y ago
A plane usually crashes because of multiple reasons. The fact that runway design was one of them is a big deal because it was a concern for all airplanes landing there not just one of them.
kelsolaar 2y ago
Ate Chuet made a quick analysis about the crash: https://youtu.be/xUllPqirRTI https://youtu.be/xUllPqirRTI. The wall is there because that area is regularly flooded, it serves for the ILS system, and it is unfortunately over the minimum legal distance for such an object.
- harshreality 2y ago
  It doesn't make sense, though, that it would have to be concrete-reinforced above ground, and non-frangible, just because the area floods. Maybe it's the cheapest way to engineer the ILS localizer to be flood-resistant? I don't know.
blueflow 2y ago
I'll recite an avherald comment: If you look at "Video of aircraft after touchdown sliding along the runway and impacting the fence:", you will find out that it took them ~1.7 sec from leaving the tarmac until they hit the construction. If you measure the distance on Google earth you come up with ~140m. That means they hit the construction with roughly 296km/h or 160 knots. If it wasn't the construction it would have been the treeline or something else. That plane was doomed, concrete construction or not.
- loeg 2y ago
  Maybe. But maybe another 1000m of dirt would have been enough to slow them before the treeline. The area south of the runway is mostly an easement for the ILS approach equipment, then a parking lot and finally some trees. It's also definitely the case that the cement-reinforced dirt mound is not best practice for a locator array.
  - TylerE 2y ago
    Yes, but in basically every single circumstance if you have room for 1000m of dirt, you have room for another 1000m of runway, which is even safer.
    - bombcar 2y ago
      This is the reality - most airports run their runways “to the fence” for some variation of “to the fence”. If they could reasonably have a thousand extra feet of runway they’ll add that, as it supports more operations and doesn’t really hurt. Some of them even move around the recommended touchdown point depending on other factors, if the runway is extra long.
- mmooss 2y ago
  > it took them ~1.7 sec from leaving the tarmac until they hit the construction. If you measure the distance on Google earth you come up with ~140m. That means they hit the construction with roughly 296km/h or 160 knots. (Assuming the math is correct:) That's the average speed over that distance. The plane would have been slowing down the whole time.
inoffensivename 2y ago
Lots of airports have obstacles not far from the end of the runway. Burbank, Midway, Orange County are a few that come to mind. Why did they need to land when they did? Why did they need to land so soon after the mayday call? (only 8 minutes from mayday to crash, as I understand it) Why couldn't they land on a longer runway? Why did they land so far down the runway? What forced them to land in a clean configuration? As an airline pilot, these are some of the questions I have. The flight data and cockpit voice recorders should be able to answer these questions.
- pfannkuchen 2y ago
  Were those obstacles installed by the airport though? I thought it was like stuff on land outside of the airport for those other examples.
  - iso8859-1 2y ago
    The localizer antenna mount (the concrete) was inside the airport perimeter. See diagram: https://multimedia.scmp.com/embeds/2024/world/skorea-crash/images/static-d.jpg?1736035201130 https://multimedia.scmp.com/embeds/2024/world/skorea-crash/i...
    - sho_hn 2y ago
      The OP knows this already. What they were saying is that just because other airports feature runways situated next to natural obstacles and this is allowed and equally dangerous, it doesn't mean this airport needed to have this particular, deliberately designed and implemented obstacle next to the runway. The reason for the concrete-reinforced berm was typhoon resilience. It begs the question whether there are alternative designs that are trade of requirements better.
      - unyttigfjelltol 2y ago
        And if an accident occurred because a typhoon washed out the antenna, people would argue a concrete foundation would have been safer. As an aside, this reminds of the consideration highway bureaus in the US give to trees and poles.[1] Trees are removed and poles should break easily and fall after a vehicle impact. This comes to mind because I have given most thought to these considerations as a pedestrian, regretting tree removals and feeling exposed to passing cars in a system designed to accommodate them safely (for them) departing the roadway anywhere, anytime. Of course, sometimes broken poles fall on cars or people, power outages are more routine especially after vehicular accidents, and there are other tradeoffs too, some of which are safety-related. [1] https://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/roadway_dept/countermeasures/safe_recovery/clear_zones/fhwasa16043/ch1.cfm https://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/roadway_dept/countermeasures/saf...
neom 2y ago
My wife is South Korean (from andong). I asked her and she looked at me like I'd grown a second head "because it's South Korea? We're a young country and that is tiny airport in the south, half of Korea is a safety hazard and you know that fine well, some freaking idiot put a wall there, oh well, it's korea" and walked off pretty angry I'd even asked.
- iso8859-1 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - frosting1337 2y ago
    > Tell her she is wrong. It's an international airport with commercial traffic. 11th most busiest airport in the country. It's... a tiny airport, both by commercial standards and by South Korean standards. Pretty sure you're just trolling though, no way this is a serious comment.
  - neom 2y ago
    "One strategy I use for my relationships with foreigners is to gently pat them on their heads if they understand me. That way, there is positive reinforcement and they are encouraged to improve their understanding." - this may very well be one of the most condescending and disrespectful things I've read on hackernews ever. Also, my wife has a PhD in American History from Yale and teaches at SUNY, I don't suspect she misunderstood the question.
    - shutupnerd0000 2y ago
      [flagged]
    - iso8859-1 2y ago
      You're assessment is correct and it was indecent of me to say such things. I'd like to apologize for both the condescension and the lack of respect.
      - 2y ago
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
Waterluvian 2y ago
Feels like a “pieces of flair” issue. The runway should be as long as it’s required to be. If after (and before) the paved runway they need a length of open space, that should be however long it is required to be, too. Beyond that there could be a minefield, a pillow warehouse, an ocean, a mountain, etc. It shouldn’t matter.
- bombcar 2y ago
  After the arrestorbed will be a massive magnetic sled that will accelerate to the speed of the plane and then decelerate the whole thing! Only infinity billions of dollars for each airport and likely cause other issues, but, progress!
ropable 2y ago
This is probably only the tenth or eleventh most-important question to answer about why this disaster happened, unfortunately.
reso 2y ago
The wall is a red herring. The plane landed halfway down the runway at high speed. Something bad is going to happen if you do that at any runway on earth. In SFO you'll end up in the bay or hit the terminal depending on the orientation. In Toronto you'll crash into a highway. Stop looking at the wall and look at the minutes before the crash.
- MoreMoore 2y ago
  People keep saying that, but I don't see how it's excusable for there to be a massive concrete block against which planes disintegrate at the end of any runway. Maybe everybody would've died some other way, maybe only 10 people would have survived, who knows. But we won't know because somebody put a massive concrete block in the way. We aren't talking about any of your examples in this crash. And it isn't relevant for many other places either. If you have an open field behind a runway and you put a concrete block directly at the end of it, you can't defend your decision with "well, in this other city it doesn't matter because you'll hit the terminal". It's some weird form of whataboutism that I simply don't understand. It's inexcusable and it's tiring seeing people defend it as if it's okay.
  - Affric 2y ago
    Exactly. Causality isn’t an equivalence relation with blame. A moral aspect has to be established.
  - kijin 2y ago
    Yes, especially because the concrete block is against regulations. A terminal beside the runway at roughly the same distance is not against regulations. Almost every rule in aviation is written in blood, so if there's a rule about something, there's probably a damn good reason why.
  - bonestamp2 2y ago
    Apparently it is a structure that holds antennas to keep an aircraft centered on the runway. The antennas have to be there, but experts are saying that the structure supporting the antennas is way over engineered and even internal airport documents had raised concerns about it: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/south-korean-officials-were-worried-about-barrier-before-it-was-struck-by-jeju-air-flight https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/south-korean-officials-wer...
kristjansson 2y ago
The graphic in the article is pretty misleading. The video of the accident shows the plane touching down with about a third of the runway left, not two thirds. All discussion of the localizer obstruction is secondary to (a) why did they touch so late and (b) why did they land so urgently.
- loeg 2y ago
  The figure I've seen is landing 1200m into a 2800m runway, which is about 1/3.
  - kristjansson 2y ago
    In the longer video, there's clear sparks from the tail strike when the plane is in line with the northeast-most structure of the airport. Lining that up with the camera location shows almost exactly 1200m of runway _remaining_.
WalterBright 2y ago
Why are we seeing random videos of this from bystanders? Why are there not video cameras constantly recording the activity on the ramp and runways?
- hyperific 2y ago
  Maybe the footage from runway cameras was sequestered for internal review.
  - WalterBright 2y ago
    I've watched nearly all the "Aviation Disasters" episodes. I don't recall any footage other than incidental amateur footage. The investigators spend a lot of time even figuring out where on the runway the various planes were, implying there was no footage.
  - alex989 2y ago
    How does hiding videos help anyone? It's not like the footage magicaly disappears when you show it to the public and investigators can't use it. We live in the digital era, it takes like 7 clicks to share the footage to the entire world. Are pilots and engineers around the world gonna be better at preventing this type of disaster if we all make sure they never ever get to see it?
    - arcbyte 2y ago
      Pilots and engineers will be better at preventing this type of disastr after and only after a review has been done. Just like a trial, seeing footage earlier and in a different venue than the "review room" can color opinions inappripriately and actually hender the search for truth.
      - WalterBright 2y ago
        Wouldn't that apply to any initial evidence?
  - 2y ago
justinl33 2y ago
The wall is a red herring 2. why was a commercial airliner attempting a no-gear belly landing with full fuel load on a runway that's only 2,800m, rather than divert to Incheon?
throwaway290 2y ago
> At a news conference on Tuesday, Jeju Air's chief executive Kim Yi-bae would not be drawn when asked about the concrete wall. I don't understand what means "would not be drawn"? > Asked by a reporter if he thought the wall was a factor in the disaster, he did not give a direct answer and instead said it was right to call the plane crash the Jeju Air disaster, rather than the Muan Air disaster. If I get this right, I think this CEO deserves props for not trying to point blame away. Let's see what investigation shows.
concerndc1tizen 2y ago
Why is it always Boeing?
concerndc1tizen 2y ago
> Firefighters said some bodies were scattered 100 to 200 m (330 to 660 ft) from the crash site while others were found mutilated or burnt among the wreckage.[61] Police officials said it would require over a week to identify the more than 600 human remains recovered.[62] Some family members provided officials with DNA samples at the airport to help identify the dead.[4] (Wikipedia) Does this mean the crash was so violent that the 179 bodies disintegrated into more than 600 parts?
- bamboozled 2y ago
  The plane hit a concrete wall at something like 150 knots, so it was pretty violent.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

135 points by vinni2 2y ago

hilux 2y ago

So many things went wrong, and yet the pilots brought the plane down safely – and then this!? Just infuriating.

underseacables 2y ago
They did not bring the plane down safely! The pilot failed to lower the landing gear, or extend the flaps, both of which, for all intensive purposes were technologically possible. Multiple redundant systems for these. I think they completely lost situational awareness, and panicked.
- K0balt 2y ago
  When an engine blows up, it’s hard to say what still worked and what didn’t. They aren’t supposed to, but when turbines come apart, there is often a lot of shrapnel that has a history of taking out multiple systems. But, it is possible that it was a case of poor crew performance. In any case, the concrete blockhouse at the end of the runway was unhelpful, and it is also outside of the standard guidance for runway aligned obstructions. In most cases, those antennas would have been on frangible towers, and the crew, at fault or not, as well as the passengers, would have had a decent chance of walking away unharmed.
  - f1shy 2y ago
    There are 3 different hydraulic system plus one electric that can be operated out of a battery… anything is possible, but it seems until now they failed to lower the gear.
    - underseacables 2y ago
      Something else that may be a factor, a lot of Asian carriers teach their pilots to use auto pilot for landing. American pilots almost universally SOP do not use auto pilot when landing. It's possible the South Korean pilot was using auto pilot to land, forced to do a go around, but wasn't in the habit of manually configuring the plane for landing. That's how the flaps and the gear were both missed. He assumed autopilot etc was handling that. I think in the cockpit voice recording we are going to be hearing the sirens going off about no landing gear and those guys were just not paying attention.
      - K0balt 2y ago
        That would be a tragic void in training and procedure. I hope for the sake of the families involved that it doesn’t turn out to be something so avoidable in practice and foreseeable in the carriers operating procedure.
        f1shy 2y ago
        I’m afraid it will be something like that…
        wat10000 2y ago
        There are numerous past examples of this sort of thing. Automation in aviation is really hard to get right. If the automation can fail then the pilots need to be able to perform whatever it was going to do. If the automation fails rarely then the pilots may not get enough practice. But if the automation normally does a better job than the pilots, there’s a tension with letting them get more practice on real flights. A recent(ish) example is the Asiana crash in SF. They had pretty much perfect conditions for a hand-flown visual approach, but they were out of practice, got behind the airplane, and it snowballed. There’s an excellent lecture about this called Children of the Magenta Line. The magenta line being the flight path or direction indicator on an autopilot, and the discussion is about pilots who constantly reconfigure the autopilot to direct the plane instead of just taking over. https://youtu.be/5ESJH1NLMLs https://youtu.be/5ESJH1NLMLs
      - robinson-wall 2y ago
    - loeg 2y ago
      There's also a backup manual gear release. But from the degree of control over the airplane demonstrated during landing, it seems likely they had hydraulics.
- f1shy 2y ago
  They were with gear down, the retracted it, as part of the go around…
  - iso8859-1 2y ago
    We don't know that for sure yet. The gear being down is based on an eyewitness report, as far as I understand from Juan Browne. The readout from the flight data recorder will provide a more trustworthy account.
    - bombcar 2y ago
      If I recall right the video that purportedly shows the bird strike shows the gear down.
      - loeg 2y ago
        The bird strike (well, compressor stall) video I saw appears to show gear up. https://x.com/Global_Mil_Info/status/1873181671375421703 https://x.com/Global_Mil_Info/status/1873181671375421703
- kiririn 2y ago
  >for all intensive purposes Always a funny one, it's for all intents and purposes
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f1shy 2y ago
Absolutely no. There is the suspicion that they even shut down the good engine after the bird strike.
- mmooss 2y ago
  > Absolutely > suspicion "suspicion" seems like fragile grounds for "Absolutely".
  - loeg 2y ago
    It objectively wasn't a safe landing. How that happened is anyone's guess, until the investigation comes out.
  - f1shy 2y ago
    Those are 2 sentences. Lately I’ve seen lots of people doing such snarky comments, without reading carefully, or just writing things that are absolutely illogical… what is going on?!
    - mmooss 2y ago
      > Those are 2 sentences. Are you saying the two sentences, in sequence, are unrelated? > snarky I wasn't intending to be snarky. My point was serious: 'suspicion' is not grounds for 'absolutely'.
wat10000 2y ago
Bringing a plane down safely involves doing it in a way that lets you come to a stop before you crash into something that’s going to kill everyone. You don’t get points for touching a runway at a point where there isn’t enough of it left for you. No commentary on the pilots’ role here, we don’t know nearly enough to judge. Could be they did a great job and they were just doomed. But the end result is that they didn’t get it down safely.

mcflubbins 2y ago

I was wondering the same thing and suspected it was some safety feature (better for a plane to smack into said wall instead of crash into some populated area, etc) I had no idea he had to make the approach in the opposite direction.

Towaway69 2y ago
This: > no idea he had to make the approach in the opposite direction. So the wall is actually at the beginning of the runway. That wall was never never meant to be at the end of a landing but at the start of landing. I don't understand why this isn't made clear. Basically the runway was used against the design specifications.
- notimetorelax 2y ago
  Runways are approached from both ends depending on the wind.
  - dredmorbius 2y ago
    This depends strongly on the airport, terrain, and variability of winds. There are airports in which approaches always or very nearly always follow the same profiles given local conditions. SFO, SJC, and SAN would be three examples off the top of my head. SFO's major approaches are over the bay, opposite approaches would involve rapid descents dictated by mountains near the airport. SJO and SAN are both limited by proximate downtowns with tall towers. Nominal approach glide paths cut below the rooflines of several structures, and make for some interesting experiences for arriving travellers.
    - notimetorelax 2y ago
      You’re right. Looking at the charts, it appears that both 01 and 19 can be used - https://aim.koca.go.kr/eaipPub/Package/2020-07-30/html/eAIP/KR-AD-2.RKJB-en-GB.html https://aim.koca.go.kr/eaipPub/Package/2020-07-30/html/eAIP/... What’s noteworthy, there’s a note to use extreme caution due to this wall if landing or taking off towards it.

Mistletoe 2y ago

I don’t know why people keep fixating on this. Airplanes can’t skid out of the airport into the surrounding city. Mistakes were made, but this isn’t one of them. I suspect it is people trying to deflect blame from pilot error, which seems by far the most likely issue. They did none of the things you should do to stop a plane.

csomar 2y ago
There is nothing beyond the embankment. Airports are generally made in the middle of nowhere. And no, they are not "skidding" into the surrounding city, he probably needed a few hundred meters at most.
- Mistletoe 2y ago
  He’s going extremely fast, a few hundred meters would do nothing. I think the estimates I saw were over 150 knots. That’s about 77 meters per second. I found this comment helpful from a Reddit thread. >The embankment is there to protect the road from the jetblast of departing aircraft in oposite runway direction. Thats why it is allowed directly in the safety area.
  - foxglacier 2y ago
    > a few hundred meters would do nothing. I think the estimates I saw were over 150 knots Show you working. Not feelings because people don't have intuition for such unusual motion. You could equally have said "a few hundred meters would be enough."
    - snypher 2y ago
      150 knots is like 77 meters a second, a 747 can do like 2m/s^2 braking giving 35 seconds to stop, 1500 meters required. Stopping time: t=v/a, t=77/2. Stopping distance: d=v^2/2a, d=77^2/2*2
      - loeg 2y ago

gazchop 2y ago

I think this is disingenuous reporting. It’s too early to actually draw a conclusion. We should wait for the full investigation. There are a large number of compounding problems here. That was just the last one.

copperx 2y ago
Even with all of the compounded problems, the flight could have been non fatal in most world airports.
- gazchop 2y ago
  I wouldn’t state that with any certainty. They touched down 1500m down the runway with little to no braking or reverse thrust. The ending may have been less violent but the outcome may have been the same. I’d rather go from blunt force than being burned alive if a wing ditched and it rolled. Let’s wait for the investigators. It’s not good to fixate on this outcome.
  - ckw 2y ago
    This is the landing of United Airlines Flight 232 in Sioux City, Iowa in 1989. It hit the runway very hard, tumbled, broke, left the runway, and burned, but encountered no significant non-frangible obstacle. Of 296 passengers and crew on board, 184 (62%) survived. It is reasonable to assume that given the absence of other significant non-frangible obstacles beyond the ILS mound that loss of life would have been low and potentially zero. https://youtu.be/sWkU6HRcOY0 https://youtu.be/sWkU6HRcOY0
thekevan 2y ago
"... the significance of the concrete wall's location about 250m (820ft) off the end of the runway." "...the runway design "absolutely (did) not" meet industry best practices, which preclude any hard structure within at least 300m (984ft) of the end of the runway." "it emerged that remarks in Muan International Airport's operating manual, uploaded early in 2024, said the concrete embankment was too close to the end of the runway." I mean that was a pretty obvious design flaw that went against common standards. I agree it isn't cut and dry yet but an investigation isn't going to change the above info.

ge96 2y ago

I was wondering what if they tried to turn whether by rudder or thrust differential would the outcome have been different/worse. Maybe you can't do much at that speed and so little room.

lutusp 2y ago
I'm a pilot. The airplane was sliding on the ground and the landing gear was not deployed. Too fast to stop but not fast enough to use the rudder for directional control. There was no realistic chance to change direction. If there had been enough engine power to control direction on the ground, there might also have been enough power to remain airborne, but based on limited information, that wasn't so. Under the circumstances the pilots would have wanted to stay airborne to buy time for a more controlled descent, were that possible. All these speculations are preliminary and may completely change once the black box information is released.
- rogerrogerr 2y ago
  > not fast enough to use the rudder for directional control. Sure about that? 160kt (how fast someone calculated it went off the end of the runway) is way above Vs1 for a 737, there should be plenty of rudder authority. Heck, Vapp is usually in the 130-150kt range.
  - bombcar 2y ago
    Rudder authority in the air, but scraping on the ground you’re not going to change direction - or take-off, either. If they were trying to take off again, there wasn’t any hope.

tedunangst 2y ago

How much difference would an additional 50m have made?

baq 2y ago
To be brutally honest, the plane would crash about a second later, so approximately none whatsoever. But this isn’t the right question to ask, as it isn’t the right question to ask why the wall was there. Why did the pilot and ATC decide it’s a good idea to attempt a gear up landing in the wrong direction is a good start.
- EliRivers 2y ago
  I recall back in 2020, when Pakistan International flight 8303 belly landed at Karachi, slid down the runway, and then took off again and had a go at going around, the investigation showed that between them, the pilots just screwed up on having the landing gear down and had a go at landing without it for no other reason than they fumbled it.
  - loeg 2y ago
    The PIA pilots totally fucked up the approach, missed that they were very high late in the approach, dive bombed down to the runway at the last minute instead of going around. CRM issues -- the senior pilot plausibly couldn't actually fly (he had a history of bad approaches with unsafe descents) and the first officer failed to raise major problems or push back at all on unsafe decisions. When they first touched down gear up, they had dual stick inputs (one pilot was pushing down, one was pulling up) -- this is a huge no no. Communication in the cockpit was awful. Just lots of awful. After the incident, PIA pilots were audited and determined like 1/3 had fake or suspicious pilot licenses(!!!). Lots of paying other people to pass tests for you. Internationally, PIA has been banned from landing by like all first world countries.
__m 2y ago
Compared to running into a concrete wall probably a lot
2y ago

baq 2y ago

The title question is like the 20th in order of importance why this crash happened…

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blitzar 2y ago
Cause of death was impacting a concrete barrier.
- ynniv 2y ago
  Cause of death was landing halfway down a runway at high speed with no gear. Why were they cleared to land if they hadn't set flaps and locked gear? There was ocean in front of them both before and after their turn: landing there would have been more survivable than landing fast and hard with no gear. They were below minimum turnback altitude, and wouldn't have been able to complete the planned turn without the same power that could have been used to stay aloft and sort out their problems. Nothing about this crash was normal, and talking about a thing past the end of the runway is misdirection.
  - bink 2y ago
    They declared an emergency. It's typical in that scenario to be approved for whatever runway the pilot deems best... or golf course... or field.
    - ynniv 2y ago
      According to the timeline I saw they were cleared before declaring an emergency. This means at the time of emergency the standard checklist required their gear had been locked and flaps set. Either they were not operating within regulation before they declared emergency, or they raised gear and retracted flaps below 900 AGL and decided to make an impossible turn instead of stabilizing their flight. I don't know what happened in this event, but the concrete box is painfully uninteresting compared to basically anything that happened before it.

Jabrov 2y ago

Runway’s gotta end somewhere

vasco 2y ago
Technically it could loop around the earth.
- echoangle 2y ago
  You don’t even have to make it that long, you can just make a large circle of runway: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endless_runway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endless_runway

gsf_emergency 2y ago

Korean police have raided the airport offices https://youtu.be/3D9BDIH553U https://youtu.be/3D9BDIH553U

psychoslave 2y ago

Just a message thinking for anyone reading who might have had some relative in this plane: sincere condolences.

Yeul 2y ago

I have been to airports whose runway end in the ocean, a swamp, a mountain and a 5 lane highway.

Aeolun 2y ago
I’m worried about the ocean all the time, so it’s weird to think that’s actually the best kind of scenario.
- WeylandYutani 2y ago
  Well depends on the weather conditions. All the successful plane ditches happened when there weren't any waves.
  - crote 2y ago
    It wouldn't be a ditch anymore. The plane won't be going perfectly straight and level while hitting the water, so there's a pretty good chance one wing/engine would hit the surface first and cause a cartwheel.

dominicrose 2y ago

A plane usually crashes because of multiple reasons. The fact that runway design was one of them is a big deal because it was a concern for all airplanes landing there not just one of them.

kelsolaar 2y ago

Ate Chuet made a quick analysis about the crash: https://youtu.be/xUllPqirRTI https://youtu.be/xUllPqirRTI. The wall is there because that area is regularly flooded, it serves for the ILS system, and it is unfortunately over the minimum legal distance for such an object.

harshreality 2y ago
It doesn't make sense, though, that it would have to be concrete-reinforced above ground, and non-frangible, just because the area floods. Maybe it's the cheapest way to engineer the ILS localizer to be flood-resistant? I don't know.

blueflow 2y ago

I'll recite an avherald comment: If you look at "Video of aircraft after touchdown sliding along the runway and impacting the fence:", you will find out that it took them ~1.7 sec from leaving the tarmac until they hit the construction. If you measure the distance on Google earth you come up with ~140m. That means they hit the construction with roughly 296km/h or 160 knots. If it wasn't the construction it would have been the treeline or something else. That plane was doomed, concrete construction or not.

loeg 2y ago
Maybe. But maybe another 1000m of dirt would have been enough to slow them before the treeline. The area south of the runway is mostly an easement for the ILS approach equipment, then a parking lot and finally some trees. It's also definitely the case that the cement-reinforced dirt mound is not best practice for a locator array.
- TylerE 2y ago
  Yes, but in basically every single circumstance if you have room for 1000m of dirt, you have room for another 1000m of runway, which is even safer.
  - bombcar 2y ago
    This is the reality - most airports run their runways “to the fence” for some variation of “to the fence”. If they could reasonably have a thousand extra feet of runway they’ll add that, as it supports more operations and doesn’t really hurt. Some of them even move around the recommended touchdown point depending on other factors, if the runway is extra long.
mmooss 2y ago
> it took them ~1.7 sec from leaving the tarmac until they hit the construction. If you measure the distance on Google earth you come up with ~140m. That means they hit the construction with roughly 296km/h or 160 knots. (Assuming the math is correct:) That's the average speed over that distance. The plane would have been slowing down the whole time.

inoffensivename 2y ago

Lots of airports have obstacles not far from the end of the runway. Burbank, Midway, Orange County are a few that come to mind. Why did they need to land when they did? Why did they need to land so soon after the mayday call? (only 8 minutes from mayday to crash, as I understand it) Why couldn't they land on a longer runway? Why did they land so far down the runway? What forced them to land in a clean configuration? As an airline pilot, these are some of the questions I have. The flight data and cockpit voice recorders should be able to answer these questions.

pfannkuchen 2y ago
Were those obstacles installed by the airport though? I thought it was like stuff on land outside of the airport for those other examples.
- iso8859-1 2y ago
  The localizer antenna mount (the concrete) was inside the airport perimeter. See diagram: https://multimedia.scmp.com/embeds/2024/world/skorea-crash/images/static-d.jpg?1736035201130 https://multimedia.scmp.com/embeds/2024/world/skorea-crash/i...
  - sho_hn 2y ago
    The OP knows this already. What they were saying is that just because other airports feature runways situated next to natural obstacles and this is allowed and equally dangerous, it doesn't mean this airport needed to have this particular, deliberately designed and implemented obstacle next to the runway. The reason for the concrete-reinforced berm was typhoon resilience. It begs the question whether there are alternative designs that are trade of requirements better.
    - unyttigfjelltol 2y ago
      And if an accident occurred because a typhoon washed out the antenna, people would argue a concrete foundation would have been safer. As an aside, this reminds of the consideration highway bureaus in the US give to trees and poles.[1] Trees are removed and poles should break easily and fall after a vehicle impact. This comes to mind because I have given most thought to these considerations as a pedestrian, regretting tree removals and feeling exposed to passing cars in a system designed to accommodate them safely (for them) departing the roadway anywhere, anytime. Of course, sometimes broken poles fall on cars or people, power outages are more routine especially after vehicular accidents, and there are other tradeoffs too, some of which are safety-related. [1] https://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/roadway_dept/countermeasures/safe_recovery/clear_zones/fhwasa16043/ch1.cfm https://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/roadway_dept/countermeasures/saf...

neom 2y ago

My wife is South Korean (from andong). I asked her and she looked at me like I'd grown a second head "because it's South Korea? We're a young country and that is tiny airport in the south, half of Korea is a safety hazard and you know that fine well, some freaking idiot put a wall there, oh well, it's korea" and walked off pretty angry I'd even asked.

iso8859-1 2y ago
[flagged]
- frosting1337 2y ago
  > Tell her she is wrong. It's an international airport with commercial traffic. 11th most busiest airport in the country. It's... a tiny airport, both by commercial standards and by South Korean standards. Pretty sure you're just trolling though, no way this is a serious comment.
- neom 2y ago
  "One strategy I use for my relationships with foreigners is to gently pat them on their heads if they understand me. That way, there is positive reinforcement and they are encouraged to improve their understanding." - this may very well be one of the most condescending and disrespectful things I've read on hackernews ever. Also, my wife has a PhD in American History from Yale and teaches at SUNY, I don't suspect she misunderstood the question.
  - shutupnerd0000 2y ago
    [flagged]
  - iso8859-1 2y ago
    You're assessment is correct and it was indecent of me to say such things. I'd like to apologize for both the condescension and the lack of respect.
    - 2y ago

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Waterluvian 2y ago

Feels like a “pieces of flair” issue. The runway should be as long as it’s required to be. If after (and before) the paved runway they need a length of open space, that should be however long it is required to be, too. Beyond that there could be a minefield, a pillow warehouse, an ocean, a mountain, etc. It shouldn’t matter.

bombcar 2y ago
After the arrestorbed will be a massive magnetic sled that will accelerate to the speed of the plane and then decelerate the whole thing! Only infinity billions of dollars for each airport and likely cause other issues, but, progress!

ropable 2y ago

This is probably only the tenth or eleventh most-important question to answer about why this disaster happened, unfortunately.

reso 2y ago

The wall is a red herring. The plane landed halfway down the runway at high speed. Something bad is going to happen if you do that at any runway on earth. In SFO you'll end up in the bay or hit the terminal depending on the orientation. In Toronto you'll crash into a highway. Stop looking at the wall and look at the minutes before the crash.

MoreMoore 2y ago
People keep saying that, but I don't see how it's excusable for there to be a massive concrete block against which planes disintegrate at the end of any runway. Maybe everybody would've died some other way, maybe only 10 people would have survived, who knows. But we won't know because somebody put a massive concrete block in the way. We aren't talking about any of your examples in this crash. And it isn't relevant for many other places either. If you have an open field behind a runway and you put a concrete block directly at the end of it, you can't defend your decision with "well, in this other city it doesn't matter because you'll hit the terminal". It's some weird form of whataboutism that I simply don't understand. It's inexcusable and it's tiring seeing people defend it as if it's okay.
- Affric 2y ago
  Exactly. Causality isn’t an equivalence relation with blame. A moral aspect has to be established.
- kijin 2y ago
  Yes, especially because the concrete block is against regulations. A terminal beside the runway at roughly the same distance is not against regulations. Almost every rule in aviation is written in blood, so if there's a rule about something, there's probably a damn good reason why.
- bonestamp2 2y ago
  Apparently it is a structure that holds antennas to keep an aircraft centered on the runway. The antennas have to be there, but experts are saying that the structure supporting the antennas is way over engineered and even internal airport documents had raised concerns about it: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/south-korean-officials-were-worried-about-barrier-before-it-was-struck-by-jeju-air-flight https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/south-korean-officials-wer...

kristjansson 2y ago

The graphic in the article is pretty misleading. The video of the accident shows the plane touching down with about a third of the runway left, not two thirds. All discussion of the localizer obstruction is secondary to (a) why did they touch so late and (b) why did they land so urgently.

loeg 2y ago
The figure I've seen is landing 1200m into a 2800m runway, which is about 1/3.
- kristjansson 2y ago
  In the longer video, there's clear sparks from the tail strike when the plane is in line with the northeast-most structure of the airport. Lining that up with the camera location shows almost exactly 1200m of runway _remaining_.

WalterBright 2y ago

Why are we seeing random videos of this from bystanders? Why are there not video cameras constantly recording the activity on the ramp and runways?

hyperific 2y ago
Maybe the footage from runway cameras was sequestered for internal review.
- WalterBright 2y ago
  I've watched nearly all the "Aviation Disasters" episodes. I don't recall any footage other than incidental amateur footage. The investigators spend a lot of time even figuring out where on the runway the various planes were, implying there was no footage.
- alex989 2y ago
  How does hiding videos help anyone? It's not like the footage magicaly disappears when you show it to the public and investigators can't use it. We live in the digital era, it takes like 7 clicks to share the footage to the entire world. Are pilots and engineers around the world gonna be better at preventing this type of disaster if we all make sure they never ever get to see it?
  - arcbyte 2y ago
    Pilots and engineers will be better at preventing this type of disastr after and only after a review has been done. Just like a trial, seeing footage earlier and in a different venue than the "review room" can color opinions inappripriately and actually hender the search for truth.
    - WalterBright 2y ago
      Wouldn't that apply to any initial evidence?
- 2y ago

justinl33 2y ago

The wall is a red herring 2. why was a commercial airliner attempting a no-gear belly landing with full fuel load on a runway that's only 2,800m, rather than divert to Incheon?

throwaway290 2y ago

> At a news conference on Tuesday, Jeju Air's chief executive Kim Yi-bae would not be drawn when asked about the concrete wall. I don't understand what means "would not be drawn"? > Asked by a reporter if he thought the wall was a factor in the disaster, he did not give a direct answer and instead said it was right to call the plane crash the Jeju Air disaster, rather than the Muan Air disaster. If I get this right, I think this CEO deserves props for not trying to point blame away. Let's see what investigation shows.

concerndc1tizen 2y ago

Why is it always Boeing?

concerndc1tizen 2y ago

> Firefighters said some bodies were scattered 100 to 200 m (330 to 660 ft) from the crash site while others were found mutilated or burnt among the wreckage.[61] Police officials said it would require over a week to identify the more than 600 human remains recovered.[62] Some family members provided officials with DNA samples at the airport to help identify the dead.[4] (Wikipedia) Does this mean the crash was so violent that the 179 bodies disintegrated into more than 600 parts?

bamboozled 2y ago
The plane hit a concrete wall at something like 150 knots, so it was pretty violent.

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